The following contains excerpts from the book, The One Minute Manager meets the Monkey (Kenneth Blanchard, William Oncken, Jr.)
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. In dealing with the subject of relationships, the subject of Leadership becomes important.
The thesis of this book is that ‘next moves on a project’ (or monkeys) should be properly assigned and delegated to the right people. Bottlenecks happen in organizations when subordinates give their managers ‘monkeys’ that they themselves should be handling. When the manager naively accepts their ‘monkeys,’ assuming responsibility for them, he becomes overworked, while the staff is under-utilized and unchallenged in their own personal growth. Many of the concepts in this book originated from Bill Oncken’s seminar and book, ‘Managing Management Time.’
Written in a quasi-testimonial style, the author explains the dilemma in which he once found himself, trying to take care of everyone else’s monkeys, doing the best he could. He eventually discovered, “Things not worth doing are not worth doing well…how easily we needlessly pick up other people’s monkeys in all arenas of life. In the process, we neglect our own monkeys and make other people dependent upon us and deprive them of opportunities to learn to solve their own problems…every time one of my people came to me and shared a problem and I took the monkey away from that person, what I was saying, in essence, was ‘you’re not capable of handling this problem so I had better take care of it myself.’”
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we help students identify their unique strengths to identify those in others, as well. When this happens, people can work synergistically with one another. A leader’s goal should not be to do everything himself but to identify and utilize the combined strengths of others, working toward a common goal.
Monkey Insurance Policies: 1) Recommend, then act, or 2) Act, then advise.
“Level 1, Recommend, Then Act, provides insurance in situations where I feel there is a reasonable risk that one of my people might make an unaffordable mistake if left to his or her own devices…I require my people to formulate recommendations that I must approve before they can proceed any further. This provides protection, but at the cost of more of my time and some of my people’s freedom.”
“Level 2 insurance, Act, Then Advise, is for monkeys I’m pretty sure my people can handle successfully on their own. They are free to resolve these matters and inform me afterward at whatever time they think is appropriate. This gives them a lot of operating room and saves me a lot of supervisory time.”
“Practice hands-off management as much as possible and hands-on management as much as necessary.”
It is our goal at our music school in Odessa, Texas to give students the opportunity to become self-sufficient. While guidance is necessary throughout the learning process, our ultimate goal is to bring the student to full autonomy.
“The reason for Rule 4…since monkeys sometimes develop unexpected problems, checkups are crucial…Checkups focus more on the monkeys’ condition than on the people themselves, so checkups give me the opportunity to ‘catch people doing something right.”
“The purpose of coaching is to get into a position to delegate!”
“Managers must not, indeed cannot, delegate until they are reasonably confident that 1) the project is on the right track, and 2) their people can successfully handle the project on their own. Managers who give their people full project responsibility and authority without such confidence are not delegating- they are abdicating responsibility.”
- I cannot delegate until my anxieties allow it.
- I can delegate only if I am reasonably sure my people know what is to be done.
- It would be foolish to delegate to someone without reasonable assurance that he or she can get sufficient resources- time, information, money, people, assistance, and authority- to do the work.
- I cannot turn control of any project over to anyone until I am confident that the cost and timing and quantity and quality of the project will be acceptable.
- The more commitment my people show, the more comfortable I will be in delegating to them.
“Success in management requires that we constantly strike a proper balance among three categories of time: 1) Boss-imposed time, 2) System imposed time, and 3) Self-imposed time”
“Boss-imposed time is time you and I spend doing things we would not be doing if we did not have bosses…Keeping bosses satisfied takes time, but dealing with dissatisfied ones takes even more time.”
System-imposed time is time we spend on the administrative and related demands from people (peers/associates) other than our bosses and our own staffs, demands that are part of every organization…includes administrative forms to be completed, meetings you have to attend, and phone calls you must handle. Some people call it red tape, some call it administrivia, some call it bureaucracy…We can’t manage without the support of these people, and we need them more than they need us. So, in order to survive within the organization, we have to conform to the…requirements of the system.”
“The third kind of time we must manage successfully is self-imposed time, which is time spent doing the things we decide to do, not things done strictly in response to the initiatives of our bosses, peers, and the people who report to us. You can’t be a self-starter without self-imposed time. Self-imposed time is the most important of the tree types of time because that’s the only time in which we have discretion to express our own individuality within an organization…it is only with self-imposed time that we make our own unique contribution to an organization.”
“Discretionary time is time in which we do the things that make our work truly rewarding over and above financial compensation- things such as creating, innovating, leading, planning, and organizing…Discretionary time is thus vital to individuals and to the organization.”
“Although discretionary time is the most vital time of all, it is, unfortunately, the first to disappear when the pressure is on…if we don’t’ comply with our bosses’ wishes we will be guilty of insubordination. If we don’t conform to the system’s requirements we will be guilty of noncooperation. If we don’t do what we promised for our staff, that is, work off their monkeys, we will be guilty of procrastination. We are very reluctant to be guilty of such organizational sins.”
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we try to give students the opportunity to become self-directed. Giving them the approval to bring their own imaginative creativity into their progress is important for their unique strengths to be nurtured.
“While neglecting discretionary time might be safe in the short run, in the long run the penalties are severe both to the organization and to myself. The long-term penalty to the organization is that it cannot survive, much less progress, without the benefits that flow only from the discretionary time of its employees; that is, if employees have no discretionary time, the organization will be denied their creativity, innovation, initiative, et cetera. The long-term penalty to me is that organizational life becomes a living death in which all I do is react to problems created by others, and I never have time to create and innovate and initiate on my own.”
To develop more discretionary time, the author describes his relationship with his staff, “Every incremental increase in their self-reliance meant an equivalent increase in my discretionary time and in their moral. (There is a high correlation between self-reliance and morale.)”
While not every student in our music school is at a level of autonomy that allows them to be self-directed, it remains our goal to bring each student to that potential. When a student starts out, they may be almost entirely teacher-directed as they begin the learning process. However, they rarely stay there for long.
“Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned about monkey management, at work and at home, is that there are always more monkeys clamoring for attention than we have time to manage. Unless we are extremely careful which ones we accept responsibility for, it is very easy to wind up caring for the wrong monkeys while the really important ones are starving for lack of attention. If we thoughtlessly try to handle all of them, our efforts will be diluted to the point where none of them are healthy.”
It is highly rewarding at our music school in Odessa, Texas to watch students mature to a point of autonomy. When they can spread out their wings and fly on their own, there is greater reward for the teacher!